by Troy Denning
“You’re Administrator Sloan, I presume?” Veta said. “Or should I say Sladwal?”
Sloan’s image shuddered for an instant, then steadied. “I prefer Sloan,” he said. “But you’ve made your point. ONI knows who I was.”
“We know who you were.” Veta recognized leverage when she heard it. “Whether that makes it into the files is your choice.”
“There’s no need to push the point.” Sloan’s booming voice filled the flight deck. “I am honoring the arrangement, am I not?”
Arrangement. Veta had no idea what he was talking about—but better not to let him know that.
“We’re happy with your cooperation so far,” she said. “But Command wasn’t expecting this kind of problem.”
“I hope not,” Sloan growled. “The hit on the Dark Moon couriers was clean, but the Keepers caught your team by surprise.”
“Our team?” Veta asked. “Which one?”
Sloan remained silent for a moment, then said, “Papa-10.”
Veta had never heard of Papa-10. She glanced to Olivia, who said, “ ‘Papa’ is a security designation. Never worked with 10.”
Sloan’s eyes seemed to recede deeper beneath his brow, and he studied Veta for a long moment. “You didn’t know that?”
“We’re just the relief team,” Olivia said quickly. “They don’t tell us everything.”
Sloan’s gaze shifted and his eyes grew visible again. “Typical ONI bullshit,” he said. “Everything is need-to-know, right?”
“That and crossed signals,” Veta said. She had the sense that Sloan was testing them. “We were trailing the Keepers when the relief call came in. Since we were here—”
“We’re the relief,” Olivia said. “So where are the cryo-jars now?”
Sloan shifted his attention back to Olivia. “With Papa-10,” he said. “The survivors, I mean.”
Olivia raised her brow. “The Keepers hit Papa-10?” she asked. “They were after the cryo-jars?”
Olivia was being a little direct in her questioning—and revealing too much about what they didn’t know—but right now, that was working in their advantage. Sloan seemed less suspicious of her than of Veta—and Veta was still trying to figure out what Dark Moon was doing on Pinnacle Station in the first place. They had obviously come to deliver the cryo-jars to someone . . . but whom?
When Veta did not leap in with another question, Olivia asked, “How many survivors are there?”
“Three ONI,” Sloan said. “Four Jiralhanae.”
ONI. Papa-10 was ONI—and, from the sound of it, Papa-10 was the team that had executed the Dark Moon couriers.
Veta did not like where her thoughts were going.
“Something’s not making sense to me,” she said. “What was Dark Moon doing here in the first place?”
“You are asking me?” Sloan replied. “They paid for a hidden berth, I supplied a hidden berth. If their onboard security was inadequate, that had nothing to do with Pinnacle Station.”
“But Papa-10 was the only group that met them?” Olivia asked. “And it left with the cryo-jars?”
“As ONI expected, I am sure,” Sloan said. “Is it any wonder half the colonies still want free of your yoke?”
Olivia looked to Veta and said nothing, and Veta knew the young Spartan had come to the same unthinkable conclusion she had.
Veta turned back to Sloan. “Where are the Papa-10 survivors now?”
Sloan smiled. “Not on Pinnacle Station.”
CHAPTER 23
* * *
* * *
0354 hours, December 16, 2553 (military calendar)
Captured Turaco Reconnaissance Craft, Insertion Run
Moon Meridian, Planet Hestia V, Hestia System
If the UNSC Testing and Evaluation Command were ever to request Veta’s opinion of the Turaco reconnaissance craft, she would report that it was a tough, versatile little vessel capable of many different missions. It had served them well during the escape from Salvation Base and the insertion on Gao, and she would gladly use it as a standoff observation platform in any number of hostile environments.
But a dropship it was not.
The cramped interior was heating up fast as it plunged into Meridian’s atmosphere, and Veta’s chair was shuddering so hard she feared the mounting bolts would shear right off. The hull’s ovoid shape seemed to enhance the effects of entry blackout, expanding the ionization envelope and degrading even internal communications. TEAMCOM popped and crackled, and the heads-up display inside her custom-modified SPI armor’s MIRAGE-class helmet flickered badly; she could barely read the interfaces.
Most worrisome of all, Veta had a bar of C-12 stowed in one of her cargo-belt ammo pouches and a handful of remote detonators in the compartment next to it. In theory, no amount of static charge would ever activate the detonators . . . but if theory was wrong, the Turaco would finish its descent in a rain of thumb-size shards.
Fred’s voice sounded inside Veta’s helmet. “Inspec . . . Lopis, it’s not necessary for . . . to join the strike team.” His words were so scratchy with ionic interference that Veta had to listen hard to understand them. “You’re not a direct-action specialist, and this will be a very simple operation.”
“Right. Simple operation.” Veta answered in a light tone, though it was difficult with all the rattling and shaking. “I’ve heard that before.”
A chorus of chuckles sounded over the static-filled TEAMCOM, but Fred remained serious. “TEAMBIO shows your respiration and heart rate elevated.”
“No kidding,” Veta said. The entry blackout would prevent their conversation from being relayed to the Silent Joe, so she felt comfortable speaking freely over TEAMCOM. “Something stinks about Papa-10, and you know it.”
“So?”
“Come on, Lieutenant.” It was Olivia, barely squeezed into the navigator’s chair in her own SPI armor, who said this. “It’s pretty clear Papa-10 didn’t just intercept those cryo-jars. They were on Pinnacle Station to take delivery.”
“So?” Fred asked again. “Maybe Osman was working an angle.”
“Sure,” Ash said, snorting. Also wearing his SPI armor, he was sitting at the Engineering Station, just forward of Olivia. “Or maybe Papa-10 is mixed up with the Tuwa assassination, and they hit the Dark Moon couriers to cover their tracks.”
“Which means they might not be all that happy to be relieved,” Mark added. He was at the back of the cabin, large enough in his SPI armor that he filled a pair of passenger seats. “We should treat them as capture targets.”
“Not our orders,” Fred said.
“Yeah, but is it against orders?” Kelly asked.
Like Fred, she was too large in her Mjolnir armor to sit in any of the Turaco’s chairs. Instead, she was standing in the aisle behind him, her hands braced against the ceiling as she rocked gently back and forth with the shuddering of the vessel.
Fred exhaled into his mic, then turned to face her. “You too?”
“Lopis is right,” Kelly said. “Something smells bad here.”
“I agree,” Linda volunteered. She was in the boarding vestibule, hidden from Veta’s view behind the engineering station partition. “The order arrived via microburst, yes?”
“Affirmative.” Fred’s tone was wary. Microburst transmissions were notoriously difficult to confirm, either by voice recognition or return transmission. “But the authorization code was right. And who else would have access to the encryption?”
“Why would Captain Ewen break comm silence to issue such an obvious order?” Linda countered. “Wouldn’t you have just assumed you should follow Papa-10 and offer combat support anyway?”
“More or less.” Fred paused, clearly weighing his team’s reservations against his apparent orders, then said, “We’ll relieve Papa-10, but we’ll assume responsibility for the cryo-jars ourselves—and let Command sort it out later. Everyone clear on that?”
He turned his faceplate toward Veta.
Knowing he wa
s monitoring her vital signs on TEAMBIO, Veta thought of calm water—a trick she used to relax in trying circumstances.
“Clear as rain,” she said. “You didn’t think I had something else planned, did you?”
“You always have something else planned.” As Fred spoke, the Turaco’s nose rose sharply, and the vibrations began to diminish. “But this time, we’re doing it by the book.”
His faceplate remained turned toward Veta.
“Got it,” Veta said. “Secure the cryo-jars, save the Papas.”
“Let Osman sort it out later. Okay?”
Veta shrugged, then reluctantly nodded. She did not trust Osman all that much, but the admiral had seemed genuinely outraged by the attack on the Tuwa family. If the culprits turned out to be a rogue ONI unit, Veta suspected that the justice would be swift . . . quiet, but swift.
The entry blackout ended, and the TACMAP on Veta’s HUD showed the landing zone less than a kilometer below. A crescent-shaped terrace wrapped around the shoulder of a gentle mountain, the LZ was about five hundred meters long and surrounded by barren slopes of lechatelierite—the hard, vitreous mineral left behind whenever the Covenant glassed a world. Near the center of the zone, a pair of wedge-shaped transport shuttles were resting on their bellies. They were oriented nose-to-nose with their emergency hatches open, and the TACMAP showed a cluster of humans gathered inside the shuttle on the left. There were too many to be the Papa-10 squad—and they were in a pretty indefensible position—so Veta assumed they were just construction personnel who had been aboard the shuttle when it was commandeered.
A pair of rescue crawlers were advancing up the valley from the settlement at Meridian Station, but they were still five kilometers from the mountain’s base. By the time they reached the LZ, Fred’s recovery team would have the cryo-jars and be on the way back to the Silent Joe. There was no sign of combat near the LZ, and Veta saw no fading infrared signatures that might be cooling bodies.
The voice of the pilot—Taj McAvoy—sounded over TEAMCOM. “Weren’t we expecting a hot insertion?”
“We were,” Fred said. “There’s a band of Jiralhanae Keepers after a squad of Papa-10 survivors. You should be seeing plenty of fireworks by now.”
“I’m not seeing anything,” McAvoy said. The Turaco was only a few hundred meters above the LZ. “And it makes me nervous. I’m going to make a sheltered approach and drop you fast.”
The Turaco fell into a sweeping curve behind the mountain, and the image on Veta’s TACMAP showed a featureless slope. Her Gammas engaged their active camouflage and seemed to vanish as their armor’s photo-reactive panels energized. Veta followed their lead, and a blurry helmet symbol appeared at the bottom of her HUD, confirming that her own active camouflage was working.
As McAvoy had promised, the descent was swift. Veta’s TACMAP showed a crescent-shaped terrace again, and the Turaco plunged. Fred and Kelly were already stepping through the open hatch as the boarding ramp dropped, and the light inside the cabin took on an emerald hue. Veta grabbed her MA5K assault rifle and hit the quick-release on her crash harness, then followed her Gammas out into the green daylight and jumped down onto the glassy gray lechatelierite.
The Liang-Dortmund shuttles lay three hundred meters away, resting near the lip of the terrace. Several wary construction workers were peering out an open emergency hatch, their heads tilted back to watch the Turaco as it climbed back to safe altitude.
Fred ignored them and turned toward the interior of the terrace, where the mountain had been cut away to create a sheer face fifty meters high. A pair of mine portals lay at the wall’s base, each about three meters square with a trickle of muddy orange water seeping from its mouth. The tunnels beyond were pitch-dark, but they appeared to run into the mountain at a distinct angle from each other.
A line of muddy footprints led toward the portal on the right. As the team followed it, Veta saw human boot prints overlaid by two-toed Jiralhanae tracks. There was no time for a thorough inspection, but the trail supported what Administrator Sloan had told her aboard Pinnacle Station—that a trio of Papa-10 survivors were being pursued by four Jiralhanae Keepers.
At the tunnel mouth, Fred signaled the Ferrets to hold for five seconds, then led Kelly and Linda into the mine in a staggered formation, one to each side and five meters apart. Though they all carried hand-lamps that could be attached to their MA5K assault rifles, they relied instead on the imaging systems in their HUDs and advanced in total darkness.
Veta took the opportunity to examine the muddy trail more closely. The mud in front of the portal showed dozens of human footprints, most facing the far edges of the terrace. But there were only a few Jiralhanae tracks.
The logical assumption was that Papa-10 had arrived well ahead of the Keepers. They had lingered outside the mine, milling around and leaving dozens of extra tracks while they pondered their options. Then the second shuttle had arrived, and they had fled into the mine.
“Okay, that’s five seconds,” Mark said over TEAMCOM. “Permission to take second squad point?”
“Granted,” Veta said. “Just don’t crowd them.”
“Mom, relax,” Mark said. “I’ve been leading counter-ambush elements since I was eight.”
“And make sure you know who you’re shooting at.”
“Mom!” Mark paused, then added, “Five-second stagger formation.”
Veta smiled to herself, then watched on her HUD as Mark’s infrared signature advanced into the darkness. The tunnel was taller and broader than even a large Jiralhanae—roomy enough to accommodate some pretty heavy equipment—so it was hardly a tight space. She tried to tell herself that going inside would be no different from entering a dark building . . . except that the mine was a dark labyrinth that could cave in at any moment.
And it reminded her of the stone cellar where she had been held captive as a teenager. The place had been her crypt for three terrifying weeks, its darkness broken only when her captor arrived to torment her, and she still found it difficult to endure dark, enclosed spaces, or to feel hot breath in her ear, or a man’s hand on her hip.
She had learned how pain could become a rock scratched from a wall over three long weeks, and how a rock could become a bludgeon that bashed in a man’s head and made certain he never . . . hurt . . . anyone . . . again.
And Veta had never really let go of that rock. It was the reason she had studied criminal investigation at the Avelos Academy and become a homicide investigator in the Gao Ministry of Protection, and it was the reason she had allowed Serin Osman to talk her into leading a Ferret team and spent six months training at the Mill. Her experience—her torture—had molded her into an agent not of the law, but of justice itself.
And Osman had not changed that. She never would.
After giving Mark a five-second lead, Olivia started down the tunnel next, and Ash slipped inside the portal to cover her. Veta tipped her head back and took another deep breath, trying to focus on the task at hand. The entire cliff face above her had been vitrified by the Covenant glassing, but she could still make out the name that had been inscribed into the stone above the portal: JENNY LYNN ADIT 2.
“Ma’am, you might want to take a look at this,” Ash said over TEAMCOM. “It could prove useful.”
Veta stepped inside the adit to find Ash standing close to the tunnel wall, shining a half-shielded hand-lamp on a large, grime-covered panel. The panel had been wiped off recently, revealing the words JENNY LYNN WORKINGS above a map that showed the basic layout of the mine.
“Did you wipe this panel clean?” Veta asked.
“Negative,” Ash said. “This mud is like snail snot. I wouldn’t even have noticed the panel if I hadn’t almost slipped when I stepped over to take my stagger position here.”
Veta nodded. The HUD imaging systems were great when it came to displaying the location of potential combatants, but they did not have the sensitivity to distinguish letters and numbers in low light—or even discern a muddy sign from th
e surrounding stone. She removed her own hand-lamp from its thigh mount and extended the shield to prevent the beam from shining down the adit, then switched it on and inspected the floor.
Like the rest of the adit floor, the area in front of the map was covered in a thin layer of orange-yellow mud. But here the mud had been trampled into unreadable ooze by someone who had stopped to study the map . . . before fleeing deeper into the tunnel. Given the signs she had seen of humans loitering outside the mine portal, she assumed it had been the Papa-10 survivors with the cryo-jars.
“Permission to make some light at the tunnel mouth?” Veta asked over TEAMCOM. “It would be good for everyone to see this map.”
“Go ahead,” Fred said. “Still no contact.”
Veta and Ash switched their hand-lamps to high and retracted the beam shields, then shined them on the map panel. Veta’s only experience with mining operations was a four-hour overview course she had received as part of her ONI hostile-environments training at the Mill. About the clearest thing she remembered from it was that an adit was just a tunnel driven more or less horizontally into the side of mountain or hill, and that its origination point was called the portal. Fortunately, Fred was carrying a resource that could probably give her—and everyone else on the team—a quick refresher course.
Veta transferred the image to her TACMAP, then relayed it over TEAMCOM and asked, “Team Leader, are you seeing this?”
“Affirmative.” Fred must have given a hand signal, because the Blue Team designator symbols on Veta’s HUD stopped advancing. “Good work. A map will come in handy.”
“Especially if we understand what we’re seeing,” Veta said. “Maybe your AI can give us a rundown on the operation?”
“My name is Damon,” the AI replied over TEAMCOM. “I wish you would remember that.”
“Sure,” Veta said. She didn’t care for AIs with prickly personalities—they always made her think of Intrepid Eye, the Forerunner AI turned serial killer who had nearly closed her book on Gao. She had no idea what had become of the damn thing, but she hoped to hell ONI was being careful with it. “What can you tell us about this place?”
